Thursday, February 2, 2012

Day 19th. It was a Thursday but felt like a Wednesday, maybe because I was too tired to remember that it was Wednesday when we left the comfort of Skip and Andrea's apartment and moved on the boat.

I also started walking with Andrea, up and down their steep driveway. That day we woke up at 6:30, to go over the house. I exercised, took a shower and published a story on the blog at their house, because we don't have internet connection in the marina. Is was 11 o' clock when we returned to do some work on the boat. Another “little project”: take the bronze strike rails off the cap rails, drive to Chuck's work shop, countersink the screw holes on his drill press, go back to the boat, scrape and sand the cap rails, put on life caulk and screw the rails back in place. Total working time, 5 hours. We saved 450 dollars.

In the meanwhile I was trying to fix the Nimble Navigation; a computer program for sailing Jim has with AIS system that alerts if there are boats around, especially when sailing at night. I reinstalled it and set it up to work with the GPS. But it was still giving me a headache, mostly because I couldn't get the AIS to show other boats, even when it looked like it was working. I gave up for the day, it was 6 o' clock, and my brain was fried.

We took a shower for the first time in the marina bathroom, that at least has hot water, but is better to shower on flip-flogs. Then we drove to Red Hook, the nearest place to find a restaurant. We checked out two places, Duffy's Love Shack and XO Bistro, the last one had a nice ambiance and yummy appetizers, the first had a better looking menu for dinner. The music was very loud, so we sat outside away from the music. We ordered our meal and Presidente beers. We were enjoying our refreshing buzz when a black guy moved from a further table to the one next to us. He was very polite when he interrupted our conversation asking where we were from. He said he was from New Jersey, then made a few comments about the weather and went back to his beer. Jim noticed that he was sketching something .

It wasn't too long after we finished our dinner, we were starving! And during all that time this guy was calling: “Sir!Sir!” Finally Jim turned and talked to him again. He showed him a drawing of us he had just finished. The artist wanted us to pay for the sketch but we weren't interested. Jim didn't want to be rude, but the guy insisted that we take the drawing, so he gave him a tip. “Thank you”, he said, “my name is Sketcher”.

It wasn't a very good picture of us, but we had to admit that it was pretty good for being drawn in the dark and barely seeing our faces. Or maybe feeling so tired we just looked like a sketch of ourselves.